What was good about it? The men who fought for it, both the soldiers and the officers. The idea that people have a right to form a new government when they conclude their current one no longer serves them.
What good would a Confederacy that survived have done? Well obviously the persistence of slavery would have been bad (just want to make that clear in case you’re a Michael Gerson type of conservative), and who knows, maybe later results would have been disastrous. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a united American nation strong enough to wage WW2. Then again maybe slavery would have ended by other means sooner than expected, and maybe North and South would have reunited peacefully. Maybe we’d have a much smaller federal government.
Who knows how history would have turned out. What if there had been no slavery in the US? Then most black Americans would either not exist, or they’d have come to be in Africa.
I don’t know why you felt compelled to put quotation marks around “defend.” That is no doubt how they saw it, and back then one thought of themself as much a Virginian, or North Carolinian, or Tennessean as they did an American.
I’m not saying I wish the South had won. Considering how many lost opportunities there were for the South, it almost makes me believe they were simply destined or meant to lose. My major point in all of this is that having admiration for the Confederates/Southerners/Rebels doesn’t make one a bad person. Statues of Confederate war heroes should not come down. Lee and Jackson were admirable and honorable. The hundreds of thousands who fought were doing what they felt to be right. One shouldn’t have to apologize for any of these sentiments for beliefs.
You may disagree totally about the Confederacy, but as a conservative I would hope that you recoil at how people are attacked for harmless sentiments like those I just mentioned, and at how they give in and apologize, which only emboldens those on the Left who seek to restrict public discourse to such a point that nothing but their views are deemed proper.
What was good about it? The men who fought for it, both the soldiers and the officers.
We're talking about a political or policy idea. Even bad policies and bad political systems can be supported by good people. That doesn't make those policies or systems good. Indeed, it could be argued that the way bad institutions and policies can get decent people of good will to support them makes those institutions or policies worse than they would otherwise be. The attractiveness of unworthy political systems distract people from worthy goals and wastes their virtues on the wrong objects.
The idea that people have a right to form a new government when they conclude their current one no longer serves them.
That people have the right to reject or overthrow a tyrannical government was established by the Declaration of Independence and by our Revolution and others. But how did the Confederacy advance the idea of self-determination and the independence of peoples? I'd argue that this idea that you can simply throw away a political union because it doesn't "serve" you in some sense was probably a mistaken one. You can undertake to change things by working within the system. If that doesn't work you can try to make a new start. But to say you don't need dialogue, consent, negotiation, that you can simply say "I'm out" and expect the rest of the country to cope as best it can, isn't really a good or workable idea or an improvement over what came earlier.
Well obviously the persistence of slavery would have been bad (just want to make that clear in case you’re a Michael Gerson type of conservative), and who knows, maybe later results would have been disastrous. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a united American nation strong enough to wage WW2.
True and true.
Then again maybe slavery would have ended by other means sooner than expected, and maybe North and South would have reunited peacefully. Maybe we’d have a much smaller federal government.
Possibly. The Southern leadership would have wanted to maintain racial segregation (that wasn't just a Southern thing, but it certainly went further in the South than elsewhere) and to keep their labor force in subjugation (as they did for a century after emancipation). They wouldn't reunite with the North without keeping much power over their subjugated population, if even then. They'd have wanted a federal government so weak that it couldn't accomplish anything.
But even if a theoretical agreement could have been reached, the idea that an independent Southern (or Northern) governing elite would submit to a new unified government may be overly optimistic. Do you really think governments and elites surrender power that easily? Wasn't that what the war was about? We don't know what would have happened, but it's at least possible, that like other governments around the world, the CSA would have done what it could to shore up its power. It wouldn't have behaved differently from other governments and wouldn't have given up its power to reestablish the union.
I don’t know why you felt compelled to put quotation marks around “defend.” That is no doubt how they saw it, and back then one thought of themself as much a Virginian, or North Carolinian, or Tennessean as they did an American.
But there were Virginians and Tennesseans who saw the federal government as their defenders. There were those who thought of themselves as Americans first and worried more about their fanatical neighbors. That's why I put "defend" in quotation marks. Maybe I shouldn't have, but we do have to remember that not every Southerner welcomed secession.
Also, I wonder about the rapidity with which everything proceeded. All of a sudden, Virginians and Tennesseans were expected to fall in line with people they disagreed with and feared a few weeks earlier -- the extremists of the lower South. I suspect some people got whiplash trying to figure out just who were their friends and who were their enemies, who was defending and who was attacking.
I’m not saying I wish the South had won. Considering how many lost opportunities there were for the South, it almost makes me believe they were simply destined or meant to lose.
Interesting. I get the same feeling looking at some of the choices rebel Southern politicians made at the time. It was almost as if they were choosing a path that they could have known wouldn't have worked. They just couldn't help it.
My major point in all of this is that having admiration for the Confederates/Southerners/Rebels doesn’t make one a bad person. Statues of Confederate war heroes should not come down. Lee and Jackson were admirable and honorable. The hundreds of thousands who fought were doing what they felt to be right. One shouldn’t have to apologize for any of these sentiments for beliefs.
Okay, but I'd distinguish between heritage and politics. Both are a part of history, but if you're talking about political ideas, and policies, and institutions, you may come up with different questions and answers than if you're talking about cultural heritage, and identity, and belonging.
You may disagree totally about the Confederacy, but as a conservative I would hope that you recoil at how people are attacked for harmless sentiments like those I just mentioned, and at how they give in and apologize, which only emboldens those on the Left who seek to restrict public discourse to such a point that nothing but their views are deemed proper.
Okay. You're right about that. There's another side to that, though. George Washington or James Madison could see the danger in too much government and in too centralized government. They could also see that a government so weak that it couldn't defend the country and enforce the laws was also a danger. Sometimes people get in a "federal government bad" or "federal government good" groove and ignore that there are dangers in too weak a country as well as in too strong a central government.